App To Help Scientists Analyze Lake Tahoe

Imagine thousands of roving sensors along the shore of Lake Tahoe relaying real-time information to a database that can be readily analyzed by researchers. That’s exactly what a new smartphone app called "Citizen Science Tahoe" will do. Utilized by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC), the app gives smartphone users the ability to upload photos and comment on what they see at the beach. Geoffrey Schladow is the director of TERC. He started a competition in March for students to develop an app focused on citizen science. The winning app is available for download at www.CitizenScienceTahoe.org. It was programmed by Shahzeb Khan, a UC Davis freshman studying computer science who won the UC Davis-wide competition.

Schladow joins us to explain how TERC will use the citizen science data collected from the new app.